Scrunchie
that was a great match
why do you keep getting into finals when i’m not there
It’s only happened twice!
And if you had been here, I’m not sure I would have made the final. Not sure how I did it at all, honestly. A lot of luck, I guess
what do you mean?
and don’t make me remind you about what happened last time we played
I haven’t forgotten, you’re just playing phenomenally right now while I feel like I’ve hit a wall. Or a ceiling. Like I’m just waiting to fail
says the man who just made a tournament final
Small tournament
all tournaments count #sizedoesntmatter. you got this
I don’t feel like I do this time. I think I’m done
call me. i’m free until 8
I CALLED HIM from my Brisbane hotel room. He answered almost immediately, saying, “Give me a sec,” as movement rustled and he left the sound of chatter behind. “Sorry, was sitting in the gym listening to Jameson tell stories about the LA Olympics for the fiftieth time. Every year I don’t play on the American team I forget how mind-numbing he is. Anyway, all yours now.”
“If you have things you need to be doing—”
“What I need to be doing is this. Talk to me. What do you mean you’re done? Why can’t you do it?”
I flumped down onto my bed with a sigh, staring up at the strip of artificial light slicing across my ceiling. I’d drawn the heavy curtains like maybe shutting out the world would shut off my thoughts. “It’s just . . . this tournament has been like a dream, because I know I’ll wake up any moment. Or be forced to.”
A moment of silence, then Miles said, “What do you mean be forced to?”
We’d talked about so many things in the last couple of weeks, and I’d tried to carry my renewed confidence in us into the firsttournament of the season, but with every match I’d won, doubt had grown like a swelling cancer. This was going to end like it had last time. Foolish to think I could get past it.
“I mean . . .” I closed my eyes like that would help. “It’s just not going to last, right? It didn’t before so why would it now?”
“Do you mean when you had your accident?”
“Yeah. It was the same then – flying up the rankings, beating top players, expectations growing that I would be the next big thing. Then it ended.”
It was hard, alone in my dark hotel room, not to close my eyes and hear the screeching tires. The crack of impact. The deep silence that followed.
“Mat, that didn’t happen because you were playing well,” Miles said, his voice cutting across that sucking silence. “You didn’t do anything to make it happen and it won’t happen again now. And yes, Iamsure because the statistical likelihood of it happening in the first place was miniscule, so the chance of it happening a second time to the same person in the same situation is equivalent to those monkeys banging on typewriters being able to recreate Shakespeare.”
“Mm, it’s hot when you math at me.”
“That’s not even math!” he laughed. “Just some basic logic or something.”
I tried to laugh along, to brush off the dread, but even as I failed, I realised I didn’t really want to. This was Miles. I couldn’t keep being afraid of what he might think of me.
“That shoulder injury felt like a warning,” I said. “That I was getting close to the limit of what I was allowed.”
“Limit?”
“My ranking. It’ll be forty-one if I lose tomorrow. Thirty-eight if I win.”
